Emory NLP Weekly - Date: 9/2/2020 - Presenter: Sonny Xu (BS/MS student) https://www.linkedin.com/events/6711696381951770624/

1. How to make Emora talk
about Sports intelligently
Emory NLP Weekly
9/2/2020
Sonny Xu

2. Summary
1. Previous approach
2. Sports Database
3. Improvement: how to make an intelligent component
a. Text-to-SQL integration
b. Data analysis and prediction
c. Opinions
4. Expected challenges
5. Expected result

3. Previous approach
● Template based dialog organized by different states
● Everything is based on rule
○ The way to generate response
○ The way of transition between two states
● While it’s relatively easy to implement, we are not able to talk about
something hasn’t been prepared.

4. Database Tables in NBA database
Table nbagames description
● Multi tables
● Lots of abbreviations in
table/column names
● Primary keys:
○ team name
○ game id (combination of date and
team name)
○ player name

5. New approach
● Three main steps
● At the beginning,
we will focus on
second layer
Overall Logic Flow

6. Text-to-SQL integration
Spider
● Zero shot
● Multi tables in multi domains
● Questions are complex
WikiSQL
● Cannot be executed against unseen
tables
● Single table in multi domains
● Questions are easier

7. Challenge
● The database in spider dataset is well
defined, especially for the table name
and column name. However, for sports
database, names are more complex.
● Current research is limited to Exact Set
Match without Values
● Understanding sentences that requires
additional information
○ Which team won the match between Heat
and Bucks yesterday?
Table nbagames description

8. Prediction
● Will be implemented as a collection
● For most cases, simple linear regression will be sufficient, such as match prediction,
player performance evaluation
○ Why do we need our own prediction while not using third-party resources?

9. Expected Result
U: How many points did Lebron James get in the match yesterday?
E: He got 30 points. I think he did a great job.
U: Why do you think so?
E: He had a high success rate for both 2-pointers and 3-pointers.
U: I agree. Do you think Los Angeles Lakers will win again in the next match?
E: Yes, because James was playing really well for the past several matches.